Sketching to the next level?

Brett, you nailed it, my straight lines are curving from my elbow, and going back to no markers is a great idea. I’ll give it a go this week.

I agree about focusing on the lines for now … but don’t necessarily only use ballpoint or other pens.Some people do great with ballpoints but I have trouble because you have to go over the lines a lot before you can get any real lineweights. It’s also very hard to make curves / ellipses bolder without getting super hairy. A lot of people recommend doing linework exercises with standard Sharpie – it makes you commit to each line (and can be very fast). Markers can be great for linework alone.

If you see Jeff Smith’s (Concept Sketches - Linework - Single concept per page by Jeff Smith at Coroflot.com) stuff like the image below, you can imagine how quick it can be … IMO quicker but cleaner than you could do with a ballpoint in the same amount of time. You can also get the same effect with felt-tips pens or even cheap-o Crayola Supertips (though they might bleed if you shade later).

A lot of it might be how you’re treating edges, corners, groupings and material faces - take a look at real objects mimic’ing the feel you’re going for and duplicate some of what you see on a few sketches, you’ll find that a light hand in those areas will help sell the idea and take out some of that cartoon’y look you wondered about.

Been sketching this week with Sharpies and ballpoint, and doing line exercises as well. Here’s a sketch from today:

good, good, keep going. Try making lines that denote the perimeter a little thicker and darker. Any line you can “tuck your hand behind”. Also, try making your cross hatches a little closer together/more of them and let them go slightly beyond the perimeter of the shadows line (note Jeff;s sketch above with that. Let your lines go past where they intersect with other lines. Lastly, try incorporating some thick to thin lines. The thick to thins really draw the eye into the sketch.

It’s great to be ambitious in your subject matter as you’ll do better work drawing something you are excited about as opposed to something you find mundane or tedious. But having said that, don’t knock the value of just sketching very simple shapes - Cubes, Cylinders, Spheres, etc.

Taking a little time at the beginning of your sketch session to bust out a few simple objects can help get you in sketch mode by letting you focus on the style of the drawing rather than the subject matter.

Theres no shame in going back to basics once in a while.

Just my $0.02 - hope it helps.

Thanks so much! This is awesome guys, you’re the best. Just playing with lineweight and practicing perspective.

Pen, fineliner, sharpie

Some more, perspective is off in a few places I can tell, but it’s practice.

varying the line weights is already helping things pop more.

The thing that stands out to me is your ellipses.

I made these images a while back to show what happens when the ellipse moves away from your eyeline.
Image 01
Image 02

This image shows how the minor axis is always oriented. In most instances, the minor axis always goes to your VP.
Image 03

Just some objects made from ellipses.
Image 04

Hope these help.

@ Yo- ya, it does for sure!
@ J6 Studios- great stuff! Thanks a bunch, I’ll add it to my list of exercises :stuck_out_tongue:

Tried out some ellipses today.



Skoshbox-

In the order that your latest sketches are posted, it looks to me like you are taking steps in the right direction. The bottom page looks a bit looser and I can spot some areas where the line weight difference is starting to add that “sketchy” POP that we all love so much.

Keep it up!

Agree that these are looking better!

You might like to try drawing cubes to warm up and then filling in the sides with ellipses like in the example below (actually just found the site but it has a lot of good info if you keep looking, is it from another C77 poster?). I noticed after doing only pages of ellipses that it was harder to draw an ellipse in the context of the rest of a sketch, but this helps that.

Robby-roy’s post is pretty important to learn because ellipses and cubes are building blocks for objects.

For instance, if you set a wheelbase for a car with ellipses, then you can use the box to find other proportions. If you use the cube then you can draw the ellipse etc.

Sketch-A-Day posted this link: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/trogu/420/reference/perspective/tutorials/ellipses.html

Thanks for the post Robby-Roy, good stuff! I remember doing that exercise in first year but I was never really good at it so I think I gave up. Gotta get back on the horse!
Some more exercises I’ve been doing:




On this one I’m getting better at noticing when my ellipses are off, but I still tend to draw them at the wrong degree, working on it.

did a quick resketch of your box with buttons.

I like to weight the lines heaviest at the bottom and sides. Try more cross contour lines to show form. Get into the habit of putting down a quick axis before you draw any ellipse that needs to be oriented to something else.

remember, if your tool doesn’t allow line weight variation with pressure changes, like a pencil, you’re going to have to lay down multiple passes to get a heavier line.

In my opinion, correct proportions in perspective is the most important thing to master. Line weight might be next then shading and lastly coloring.

Quick creative procrastination sketch I did, papermate fineliner.

Just doing some more practice:
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